How much elephant weigh tons

The trunk is used for drinking, bathing, smelling, breathing, trumpeting, and grabbing things. Elephants will also use their trunks to show affection. Although elephants have large and thick bodies with little fat covering ideal for storing water, elephants are highly dependent on water sources. Even the desert elephant, suited for dry climates, can only go a maximum of 3 days without water. Just behind the tongue of an elephant is a small pouch called the pharyngeal pouch. This area, most commonly used by elephants to make a deep rumbling sound for communication, can store about a gallon of water.

Elephants will also use their feet, trunks, and tusks to dig large holes in dry riverbeds and reach water sources. Lions, hyenas, and crocodiles all prey on baby elephants. Adult elephants have very few natural predators , though lions have been known to brazenly hunt elephants when desperate. Both male and female African elephants have tusks, but only male Asian elephants have tusks.

Tusks are used as a tool for digging, gathering food, and defending themselves. Elephant tusks are highly prized in the ivory trade, resulting in illegal elephant poaching. We partner with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, where wildlife care specialists rehabilitate, raise, and eventually rewild orphaned African elephants.

The small country of Botswana is home to the largest contiguous elephant population remaining on the African continent. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has partnered with the nonprofit Elephants Without Borders EWB to delve further into questions about elephants, their behavior, and the best ways to help conserve them. Blood samples from elephants in Africa have been taken to our labs for ongoing genetic studies; fecal samples are collected for analysis of diet and stress in elephant populations throughout their range to possibly determine health conditions and motivation for elephant travels.

Elephants Without Borders has been deploying satellite-monitoring collars on elephants throughout northern Botswana since , having tracked over 90 individual elephants; this is one of the longest and largest elephant movement studies in Africa. Every individual pachyderm has its unique character and intriguing story to his or her own seasonal march, preferred routes, and favored places.

Each new elephant fitted with a tracking device provides new information to understand the elephant ecology. Unpredictable individual ranging behavior coupled with a dynamic, ever-changing environment in Botswana underscore the need for long-term elephant studies. The elephants are tracked from a fixed-wing plane, which allows a visual assessment of collared elephants to determine herd structure and habitat use. This project is developing experimental plots with various methods of keeping elephants away from crops.

Along with aerial survey wildlife counts and satellite-collared elephant data, these projects are essential for developing community-based conservation programs to reduce human-elephant conflict and make better-informed conservation decisions for all.

In addition, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has developed anesthesia techniques that are used at other zoos and can be used in the wilderness. All of these efforts help us and other zoos continue to provide the highest level of care for the elephants in our care and to assist elephants in Africa and Asia. By supporting San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, you are our ally in saving and protecting wildlife worldwide.

Height at shoulder: Females average 8 feet 2. Weight: African elephant females up to 8, pounds 3. Weight: Asian elephant females about 6, pounds 2, kilograms , males 11, pounds nearly 5, kilograms. The low, resounding calls elephants make can be heard by another elephant up to 5 miles 8 kilometers away.

Elephants have been relentlessly slaughtered for their tusks, even though the tusks are made of dentine—the same as our teeth. Elephants favor either their left or right tusk. One tusk usually shows more wear than the other. Frequent bathing and showering, as well as powdering with dirt, is an important part of elephant skin care.

Are elephants afraid of mice? Elephants do sleep for a couple of hours while lying down—our elephant care specialists have even heard them snoring. A 14,pound 6,kilogram African elephant is able to carry up to almost 20, pounds 9, kilograms.

Elephants at the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park eat up to pounds 57 kilograms of food each day, and they each deposit about pounds kilograms of poop daily. How is this possible? Main menu. Search form Search. Here are a few ways to tell them apart: - African elephants both species have large ears that are shaped like the continent of Africa, both males and females have visible tusks, their skin is very wrinkly, their back is swayed, and the end of their trunk works as if they have two fingers there to help them pick things up.

Sounds bonk. Unlike other mammals, elephants grow throughout their lifetime. Their dung is full of seeds, helping plants spread across the environment—and it makes pretty good habitat for dung beetles too. In the forest, their feasting on trees and shrubs creates pathways for smaller animals to move through, and in the savanna, they uproot trees and eat saplings, which helps keep the landscape open for zebras and other plains animals to thrive.

Elephant ears radiate heat to help keep these large animals cool , but sometimes the African heat is too much. Elephants are fond of water and enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it all over themselves.

Afterwards, they often spray their skin with a protective coating of dust. An elephant's trunk is actually a long nose used for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a potential meal. The trunk alone contains about 40, muscles. African elephants have two fingerlike features on the end of their trunk that they can use to grab small items.

Asian elephants have just one. Both male and female African elephants have tusks, which are continuously growing teeth. Savanna elephants have curving tusks, while the tusks of forest elephants are straight.

They use these tusks to dig for food and water and strip bark from trees. Males, whose tusks tend to be larger than females', also use their tusks to battle one another. Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruit, and bark. An adult elephant can consume up to pounds of food in a single day. These hungry animals do not sleep much, roaming great distances while foraging for the large quantities of food that they require to sustain their massive bodies.

African elephants range throughout the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa and the rainforests of Central and West Africa. The small, nomadic herd of Mali elephants migrates in a circular route through the desert in search of water. An elephant can destroy an entire season of crops in a single night.

A number of conservation programs work with farmers to help them protect their crops and provide compensation when an elephant does raid them. Elephants are matriarchal , meaning they live in female-led groups. The matriarch is usually the biggest and oldest. She presides over a multi-generational herd that includes other females, called cows, and their young. Adult males, called bulls, tend to roam on their own, sometimes forming smaller, more loosely associated all-male groups.

Having a baby elephant is a serious commitment. Elephant have six sets of teeth that grow one set after another, throughout their lives.

By the time they reach their 50's, most elephant have started to use their final set. Elephant Social behaviour Elephants are social animals who tend to live in large groups.

There is usually one leader, the matriarch, who is often the oldest female, with the rest of the herd being made up of her own offspring.

Being the oldest, she has the experience and knowledge that will ensure the survival of the herd in times of hardship. She will take them to water and food beyond their usual range, and teach them how to protect themselves from danger.

Young females will usually stay with the herd, whilst the males leave the herd during adolescence between the ages of 10 and 19 years to lead the life of a more solitary bull elephant. Family life is definitely all about mums and their babies, although the male elephants are usually not too far away, keeping an eye on their offspring. Elephant Communication Elephants are highly intelligent, social animals that use a variety of different means to communicate with each other. Like humans, they love to talk to each other by vocalising a range of calls and sounds.

Research shows that as many as 70 different calls have already been identified, ranging from the loud trumpets of panic to the comforting rumbles of reassurance. They also use infrasound sounds that are at a frequency inaudible to humans calls which can be heard up to 14km away. Recent evidence also suggests that they may also be able to communicate through seismic waves that pass through the ground, which they pick up through their sensitive feet.

Like many other animals, elephants also use smells to pick up information about other elephants and their environment. For example, a male can tell when a female is ready to mate from the chemical signs she leaves in her urine and faeces. This, combined with the characteristic calls of that time, ensures that all the local males will know when the time is right to compete for her affections.

Elephants secrete chemicals from temporal glands that are behind their eyes. We do not fully understand their function but it does appear to be linked to chemical communication. Elephant Reproduction Reproduction is one of the most important elements of nature.

It ensures the continuation of every species, and every species does it differently! In the elephant world, females are generally ready to become a mum at around years old and can give birth to as many as 12 calves throughout the course of their lives. Whilst we consider the human gestation period to be lengthy, at a mere 9 months, be thankful you are not an elephant! The average gestation period for a female elephant is a whopping 22 months.

Female elephants must have a thing for the older man, as males do not come into their prime until they are between years of age. Musth is a periodic condition in bull elephants that is characterised by highly aggressive behaviour and is accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones.

Testosterone levels in an elephant in musth can be as much as 60 times greater than in the same elephant at other times. Musth can last for as long as six months in the dominant males and they will often stop feeding for several days during this period of time.

Elephant Love and Relationships Rumour has it that elephants mate for life. Whilst this is not necessarily true, animal scientist have proven that they will never stray far from mating partners. They are known to be able to develop strong and intimate bonds between friends and family members. They can form lifelong friendships and will often only move in the same groups for their entire life.

Elephants are also known to mourn the death of a loved one, and have even been seen grieving over stillborn calves, or baby elephants who do not survive the first few months of life. Family groups have even been known to return to the locations where friends or family members died and linger there for some time. Elephants need excellent memory skills in order to survive in the wild, and can recognise a previous companion or family member by the scent of their urine alone. So, whilst elephants may not quite be as romantic as we like to think they are, there is certainly a lot of evidence that they do form strong bonds with their own social networks.

Elephants can live for up to 70 years in the wild, so being part of a group is important to them. Baby Elephant Facts Baby elephants are cute - there are no two ways about that. But, they are also highly evolved and one of the most advanced species when it comes to their new born capabilities.

A baby elephant is called a calf and can weigh around lbs 91 kg and stand about 3 feet 1 m tall. They can't see very well when they are born, but much like human babies, they can recognise their mothers by touch, scent, and sound. For the first few months, the babies stay very close to their mothers for food, warmth and support. They are hungry little things too, and can consume as much as 3 gallons of their mothers milk every day.